The Scrabbled: Making Fun of Each Other since '99

So, I googled them today and found this review on Yelp, and for some reason it really, really pissed me off.

“It hurts me to say this, but. Spike Lee had it all wrong.

On the fifteenth anniversary of his colored paean to racial division, gentrification and Aristotelian tragedy Do The Right Thing, the diminutive director decried his audience by suggesting that nothing had changed. The Asian grocers still gouged locals; hardheaded Italians resisted urban flight; African-Americans herded themselves; and carefree white hipsters clattered up stoops.

At Hana Deli, there is a curious fusion of food, shopping race and loitering that runs antithetical to Lee’s tragic ruminations. A late-night haunt not far from the Lorimer stop on the beatified L train, this deep bodega surprises newcomers with its fresh produce, countless sodas and drinks, engaging spice rack and a cluttered sandwich board advertising hokey concoctions such as “Monkey Brain” and “Meet the Forkers”. The grocery is run by impish Korean women arrange mochi balls, kettle chips and donut peaches with the precision and concision of a clandestine code, and they render change with the swift alacrity of pachinko machines. The deli is run by hirsute Latins who bemoan delivery orders like Falstaff in D minor while customers stylishly bottleneck around amber bottles of organic Ginger Beer and take-away containers of iridescent seaweed salads. Outside a pride of be-dreaded hipsters smoked Export As and gleaned surreptitious glimpses over the shoulders of owlish shopgirls who dragged iced coffee through straws with petite frugality.

While the menu reads as a prank, the sandwiches were deliciously engineered and combined grocer and delicatessen fluidly. The “Marry Me Omar” (chicken, apple, bacon, horseradish and avocado on a baguette) was had made with thinly sliced medallions of apple that brought the bacon out. The chicken was breasty and chunky—a merit in a sandwich, a demerit in a man—and the baguette was fresh and as thin as a Frenchman, the legs of his lover or the cigarettes they shared afterward. Avocado harnessed the horseradish, braced it and formed a neat twist on hotel butter.

I perused the half dozen juice boxes of coconut milk (one of the new worlds most refreshing elixirs) and jostled with some rakish vegans trying to conjure the persona of Ian Curtis who fidgeted while their “I Wanna be beeyotche” (vegan turkey salad, brie, and accoutrements on 7 grain bread" were queued behind my order. There was palpable tension, but a second feel announced that this was the confrontational of two, essentially passive forces.

The “Teddy Bear” was a healthy stack of sprouts, cucumber, tomato, basil, fresh cow milk mozzarella covered in prosciutto and honey mustard on a baguette. The proscuitto was marked by a thin rivulet of fat that bordered the cured meat with a bit too much tenacity; otherwise, the sandwich playfully married a caprese salad with a BLT. The mozzarella oozed warm brine with every bite. Full leaves of basil may be too fibrous to garnish a sandwich, but the flavors were summery and the sprouts, along with the cucumbers, refreshed rather than filled.

A brief stroll around the grocery store surprised me. The spice rack sold two varieties of lavender flowers, one of which I purchased. The perfunctory aisle of un-perishable sides was represented by untold varieties of boutique goodies like Spicy Thai potato chips, Mi-Del graham crackers and Ak Mak crackers which were being picked up by men and women who could swap their skinny jeans. The drink aisle was sparkling clean and adequately cooled. Buyers could choose a Kombucha or a Coke or anything in between.

That Hana Deli will deliver for free and is open around the clock means I will probably deposit ten to twenty dollars there a week. I imagine I’ll begin to take the subway one stop further and get to know the shops between their shop and my apartment.

My near-neighborhood deli!"

Is that guy trying too hard or what?